Off to Colorado Kansas City

So earlier this year Mark decided to take the kids to Colorado to Rocky Mountain National Park.  They'd never seen mountains.  Not in person anyway.   I hadn't been to the Rockies since the last time Mark & I went in 2007, and it was looking increasingly like Vicki's schedule wasn't going to allow a trip with her, so I asked Mark if he minded if I tagged along.

We were going to go in July, but unforseen circumstances put it off until early August.  But Vicki had already planned a trip to Fort Wayne to start packing Mother up for the move the week we were originally going... and she had appointments she couldn't change.  So we spent that week apart, and the August Colorado trip rolled in not too long after that.

I'd decided after a few trips out there that in general, the less cooking, the better.  You have to keep food smells out of your campsite, which means being very careful not to store food outside your car or bear boxes, and to leave dirty dishes in your campsite, and not to wash dishes in your camp site.  It's not so much the cooking, but the cleaning up afterward that introduces logistics that just take up too much time.  Time for going and seeing awesome places and things.

I loaded up on granola bars, protein bars, almonds, M&M's, apples, bread, peanut butter, crackers, beef jerky, and a big can of powdered Gatorade.  I also brought a pound of Colby cheese and a pound of summer sausage.

And a case of beer.  Well, two half-cases.  A twelver of of Busch (hey, head for the mountains, man!) and one of O'Fallon's Wheach -- which is flippin' awesome.  Ok, so there was a handle of bourbon in the trunk as well.  Just in case :-)

I packed my big guitar and the backpacker, the bin of general camping equipment.  Back Pack.  All of my camera equipment (except I forgot my tripod AND my monopod!!!! Doh!!!)  and a bag of electronic gear.  Netbook.  Battery chargers, walkie talkie and chargers.  Extra batteries.  Cables, cords and the like.  Pipes and tobacco.  A few cigars.   The little Ford Escort was pretty full.

On my way out of town, I was thinking one of the kids would probably ride with me, or they would take turns.  So.... I dropped by Wally World and picked up a trailer-hitch rack so I could carry some stuff on it.

I cruised to KC with my new cruise control and newly fixed AC, crankin' the tunes for a ways, listening to Federalist Papers for a while, too.  Got to the Groves where Mark and I put the rack together and mounted it to my trailer hitch.   We crashed early for a 4:00am wakeup time.   Got up.  Grabbed coffee.  Loaded some of the stuff inside my car on the rack.  Cassie called "shotgun".  And off we went, communicating via walkie talkie.  Handy, those.